I’ve lost count of how many players I’ve seen sprint straight from the final whistle to the car park, desperate to get home to a sofa and a takeaway. They think they’re “done,” but then they spend the next forty-eight hours walking like they’ve got rusty hinges in their hips. I see it every Sunday
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve stood on a freezing touchline watching a group of lads spend twenty minutes doing slow, rhythmic lunges and static stretches like they’re preparing for a yoga retreat rather than a ninety-minute scrap in the mud. It’s a complete waste of time. If you think holding a hamstring
I once watched a young, bright-eyed coach—fresh off a fancy academy course, no doubt—try to run a ninety-minute tactical session for a group of twelve-year-olds on a Tuesday night in November. By the sixty-minute mark, half the squad were staring at the clouds, and the other half were busy trying to see who could kick
I’ve sat through enough coaching seminars in heated halls to know that most of them are absolute rubbish. They’ll hand you a glossy folder full of colour-coded diagrams and tell you that the secret to success is a complex, multi-stage progression that requires a degree in mathematics to follow. But let me tell you something: